The wedding also marks a year since the Council’s fall. Her stepsons and students still recovering mentally and physically from the bloody and unforgiving battle over Mars’s skies. Together, they have built not only a new settlement but also a sense of normality and community. Iris next hopes to build a University and to invite those from Earth come to study their green planet. This green energy technology, the decorative box and mural, remains a mystery. Its source unknown - this philosopher Hans Ashtar the only link. She wants Earth’s best minds to study it, but only those she can trust.
Iris walks hand-in-hand with VanWest to the dining area, lined with so many presents, including handmade products such as wrapped foods and paintings. LeSouris has cheekily gifted them part of the ‘sexy’ looking and now retired Hawkeye, its red eye. Barys and Kun-lee also gift more memorabilia of VanWest’s adventures, having tracked down his cracked Universal Games helmet with the InsectnOut logo. But it is a present at the far end that catches VanWest’s attention the most, the NASA Meatball sphere, it looks just like the one outside the Elites Quarters on the SCC-400, that too he has seen on Merritt Island, Florida in 1998.
Before he can ask who it is from, Iris whispers, ‘I’ve saved the best present for you only’!
VanWest tries not to give away that he knows already, but he can’t help himself, for he has been smiling so very happy for the last 2 weeks and places his hand on her belly, ‘I’ve already named him’?
Iris giggles, ‘Oh really’?
VanWest grins, ‘VanWest number… no, I’m joking! I’ve called him Dederic after the last President of Mars’.
Iris smiles back, ‘A perfect choice, my love. May we remember our past, so we don’t make the same mistakes in the future’.
Iris gives VanWest another kiss as the music starts to play, the resistance song of defiance and strength, La Vie en Rose. The same song VanWest heard on the taxi’s radio in 1951 Paris, on his first mission to track down the Utopians. They dance gently, awaiting the feast being laid out on the rows of white-clothed tables. Moving faster across the dance floor as the song plays louder. Iris’s stepsons join in, clapping and cheering them on. The others too.
* * * * *
The light seems to be brightening. VanWest looks over at the presents once more. There are items he didn’t see before, items similar in design to those he saw in Schuurman’s lab. Small stone statues decorated with a face with round eyes, a crown and fangs. Others depicting a snake with feathers. The NASA Meatball sphere’s shape and the name plaque is also changing, Alpha Mission Control, Space Ken…. His hands shaking, he tries to tell Iris, but he has difficulty to articulate and find his words, ‘Look! Look the sphere changes… Do you see the present’?
Iris returns a puzzled look, ‘What the… The round, ancient carved stone? The name plaque reads The Revered God Schuurman.
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VanWest
The Future
Out 2023
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-8380561-3-1
Book 3 in VanWest Series
Follow on Facebook and Twitter @VanWestbooks
The Present Page 20